09/09/2015
We have to leave our small apartment in Seville. It will be a long drive to Lisbon. We never usually plan to drive more than around 250km in one day when we self-drive in Europe, but this time I wanted to be sure that we spend the most time possible in Sintra, a little town just outside Lisbon.
We stopped for lunch in Évora, one of Portugal’s most beautifully preserved medieval town. As usual, we (accidentally) found ourselves driving within the walled old town, and luckily found a parking spot easily enough to look like we knew what we were doing.
I never knew that cork could be transformed into products as beautiful as you see in Portugal. The handbags, and even shoes, are very pricey, but just beautiful. We found a small restaurant down one of the many little side-streets, and enjoyed a lovely meat tapas platter. Whilst we were sitting here, watching the small-town world go by, I thought I heard the intro guitar riffs of one of Niel’s favorite songs. But the voice was that of a woman. One after the other, familiar songs were covered by the same voice. I eventually asked the waiter, who babbled something in Portuguese, of which I only recognised the word “Bossa”. So I googled it. Hit songs done in Bossa Nova style. Hmmm. Maybe it’s worth looking into.
Back on the road, Niel happened to find a radio station with mostly music. Mostly easy listening music. And mostly, it just happened to be mostly the same Bossa Nova style covers of hit songs. We are definitely looking for some of these CD’s.
We arrived in Lisbon in peak hour traffic. And our route took us on more congested highways than would possibly be necessary. But I wanted to take Niel over Ponte Vasco da Gama, a 17.2km cable-stayed bridge that crosses the Tagus river. Apart from the mind-boggling fact that the wide expanse of water we were travelling over was actually a river, the bridge itself was pretty impressive. 
Sintra is just breathtakingly beautiful! We managed to find our accommodation easily, despite the narrow streets that often inappropriately turn out to be one-ways in exactly the direction you do not need them to be going. Once again, I was pleased that I chose to “drive” the route on Google Streetview. I knew exactly where the tricky bits would be.
Supper was at a lovely restaurant in Sintra, and even though the streets were almost overcrowded with tourists, Sintra still feels like such a relaxing town to be spending a holiday. I cannot wait to explore the area a little more.
